Performance Shootout: Microsoft’s XP, Vista, and Windows 7

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes at ZDNet did a performance test pitting the different Microsoft operating system against each other. He wanted to see how the different Windows 7 builds would compare to Vista and XP. This unofficial performance competition was done knowing that Microsoft’s latest OS is still in beta, but the author thought it would be a good clue to how Windows 7 is progressing and maybe even how it will eventually fare against the older operating systems. Check out if Windows 7 can beat Vista and XP!

Here are the main details of what was tested:

The experiment tested the following five operating systems:

Windows XP SP3 32-bit

Windows Vista SP1 32-bit

Windows 7 beta 1 build 7000 32-bit

Windows 7 beta 1 build 7000 64-bit

Windows 7 build 7048 64-bit

There are 31 real world scenario tests. Here are some examples:

Installing the operating system

Booting up and shutting down

Moving 100MB of JPEG files from one hard drive to another

Opening a complex Excel document including formula and charts

And even tests running video games like Call of Duty

Each test was done on two separate desktop systems:

An AMD Phenom 9700 2.4GHz system fitted with an ATI Radeon 3850 and 4GB of RAM

About the Author

Lisa Szpunar has a Bachelors of Arts in Elementary Education from the University of Iowa and a Masters of Science in Computer Science from Northern Illinois University. During her three years teaching in public schools she taught computer skills to students and peers, maintained the schools’ networks and hardware, ran the libraries, and helped to facilitate technology throughout the school district. At Train Signal Lisa manages the production of training videos, does video editing, and helps with technical support.